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Dana Schutz smothers her paintings in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, brandishing fists and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

A Model by Dana Schutz.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the painting daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She inevitably came out of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.